One of my seminary professors who is now Bishop of Geneva, Switzerland, started class one day saying, “I hope that one day, all of you will lose your faith. And your hope.” He had his familiar grin on his face, so we knew he was up to something, but we didn’t know how to take the statement.
He continued in his French accent, “that is the best thing I can wish you, no faith and no hope. You see, when you get to heaven you will not need faith because you will see God face to face, and you will not need hope because all your hopes and dreams will be fulfilled in heaven.”
He was right… on earth we live by faith which is believing things we have not seen first-hand but that we believe because we trust those who teach us, and we live with great hope, waiting for the fulfillment of the promise of eternal life. So it is correct to wish your loved ones, “I hope one day you will lose your faith, and your hope.”
Saint Paul writes at the conclusion of the beautiful ode to love, perhaps one of the most striking passages in history written on love, “so faith, hope, and love remain, these three; but the greatest of these is love.”
I can have everything in the world, but without love, I have nothing.
I can have the truth, I can be right, but if I do not have love, I have nothing.
I can have an impressive resume, but if I do not have love, I have nothing.
Beyond faith and hope, love is the greatest because it endures forever, even after death.
The definition Saint Paul uses for love is quite involved: love is patient, kind, not jealous, not pompous, not inflated, not rude, it does not seek its own interests, not quick-tempered, does not brood over injury, does not rejoice over wrongdoing, and it bears, believes, hopes and endures all things.
This passage is oftentimes heard at weddings, and everyone gets googly eyed. Love and excitement are in the air, and everyone is looking at the beautiful newly weds as an expression of the love Saint Paul describes.
Yet, in the Gospel passage Jesus gives two specific examples of acts of love and the people of Nazareth get so upset that they try to throw him off the cliff. How come the examples of love Jesus uses cause so much anger?
The Gospel passage picks right up from where it left off last week… it even repeats a few verses.
Jesus reminds his townspeople that during the time of drought and hunger, God send the prophet Elijah to the widow of Zarephath in the land of Sion, meaning the widow was not a Jew. If you are not familiar with this story from the Book of Samuel, the window of Zarephath baked a cake for the prophet using the last of her flour and oil, to the point that after the made it, she said to her son, “we shall eat and die.” However, God blessed her and she did not run out of flour or oil for the rest of the drought.
Jesus also recounts how Elisha the prophet instructed Naaman the Syrian, an enemy of Israel, to bathe in the Jordan River seven times so he would be healed from leprosy. Again, an act of love toward an outsider.
The people of Nazareth get angry at these examples of God showing love to the widow and to Naaman the Syrian. Why? Because they are outsiders… they are people that the Nazarenes would not have thought about helping. Those “other people” were not worthy of love.
Saint Paul’s Ode to Love is beautiful when heard at weddings… but how about when we are called to show love to those whom we or society thinks are not worthy of our time or love. This is the message of Jesus to his townsfolk and to us: we are called to show acts of love and kindness not only to those we like and prefer to be with, but precisely to the outsiders, those we do not naturally gravitate towards. To show patience to those who try our patience; to be kind to those who have not been kind; to not be quick-tempered towards those that try us. To be compassionate toward the poor and needy.
It’s easy to live out Paul’s words when we have in mind someone close to us, but it becomes quite a challenge when we widen our horizons and consider all the people we interact with on a daily basis.
Faith and hope pass away, but love endures. Our words and acts of love we will take with us after we die. When we see Jesus face to face he will simply ask, “how have you loved?” May he give us the grace to have hearts generous with love, so that we may live out Saint Paul’s description of love.
Picture is mine, all rights reserved. Entrance to market in Nazareth.
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